Cities, Businesses and Vets Unite Against Dakota Access Pipeline

President Donald Trump’s Jan. 24 memo to the Secretary of the Army signaling the go-ahead for the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines was great news for the project’s developers, Energy Transfer Partners and Trans Canada. The memorandum, like Trump’s surprise election, signaled new confidence in a declining market that is still fighting to prove its mastered environmental liabilities. But the memo did something else, as well, something that proponents of troubled projects like DAPL and Keystone XL had a problem surpassing in past decades: It suggested a route for approval that bypassed the rigorous environmental assessment and vetting processes that are usually expected in infrastructure projects. It did so by suggesting that oil and gas developments and their potential impact upon communities that have already been victim to oil spill controversies could be “review[ed...